


let's not try to figure out everything at once

by meretricula



Series: It's Going To Take A Lot To Drag Me Away From You [10]
Category: Football RPF
Genre: Forced Bonding, Gen, Psychic Bond
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-02
Updated: 2012-09-02
Packaged: 2017-11-13 09:40:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/502096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meretricula/pseuds/meretricula
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some things you just have to work out for yourselves. (Final installment of an AU-of-an-AU that also includes <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/233544">we are the next time around</a>, <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/316329">all the things we did and didn't do</a> and <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/357262">put our able hands to labor</a>.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	let's not try to figure out everything at once

David could tell that Messi--Leo, he might as well call him Leo if he was going to be poking around in David's _head_ \--was still a little upset as soon as he laid eyes on him, and that threw him, because he didn't know how he knew. Leo's face was completely blank, and it wasn't like there was some voice in David's head now saying _I'm angry and scared and you'd better be careful with me_ , but he knew anyway. 

It pissed him off. First of all, he didn't _want_ to know that, didn't want to have to take someone else's totally arbitrary feelings into account with everything he did or said, and secondly who the fuck did Messi think he was to get mad at him, when he was the one fucking everything up. 

"Guaje, I swear to God," Xavi said calmly, interrupting his internal monologue, and kicked him in the ankle. "That hurt? Good. Stop sulking and go _fix this_." 

David opened his mouth to snap, thought better of it, and sighed. "Aren't you coming too?" he asked, trying not to sound plaintive. 

"I'm not going to interfere between you and your bondmate," Xavi bit off. He sounded a lot more offended than David thought the question warranted. "What kind of person do you think I--oh, Christ," he said, and suddenly deflated. "Sorry. Look, it would be _really_ rude to Leo if I did. What's between the two of you is between the two of you, all right? I know you don't know any better and Leo probably wouldn't mind, but it's a bad idea. You've got to work it out with him. It's private." 

"I didn't think you psychic bastards knew what privacy meant," David tried to joke. Xavi's eyebrows drew together. 

"I've got ten other people trying to shove themselves into my head every minute of every game," he said sharply. "Eleven if you count the mister, which Christ knows you should considering he's louder than the rest of you combined. I know what privacy means better than you. No, it's fine, don't apologize. You'll understand eventually. But--" Xavi hesitated, biting his lip. "Guaje, not now, but later. You should apologize to Gerard." 

"To _Ger_ \--"

"Guaje!" Xavi crossed his arms over his chest and glared. "Stop stalling."

"Fine," David muttered, and went to face the music. 

*

"Hey," Messi said, monotone and unwelcoming. David nodded and didn't bother to speak; without consultation they fell in together and headed out of the garage. They were even walking in unison, David noticed in disgust a minute later, and intentionally held back his next step. Leo stumbled over nothing, and David caught his arm before he could fall. 

"I hope you're feeling better," he said. He hadn't planned to be the first to speak, and the words hung awkwardly in the air between them. 

"It was just a bad feedback loop," Leo said, as if that meant anything to David. "I'll be fine so long as you don't--anyway, Cesc came back last night, he and Geri were both with me. I'm okay." 

"Cesc?" David repeated, although he'd meant to ask _so long as I don't_ what. "Cesc Fabregas?" 

Leo looked sidelong at him, one eyebrow barely quirked. "Do we know a different one? Of course Cesc Fabregas." 

"What does Cesc have to do with anything?" 

This time Leo was the one who stopped and it was David who tripped. "Didn't Xavi--I thought he explained." 

"Clearly not well enough," David said, fighting not to take his irritation out on Leo. It wasn't his fault that Xavi could be a cryptic asshole when it suited him. 

"Oh. But then--okay." By unspoken mutual consent they had taken the stairs instead of the elevator, and in the badly-lit stairwell, boxed in by grimy walls of cement, it was hard to interpret what the look on Leo's face meant. It occurred belatedly to David that it was probably just as hard for Leo to understand him, but before he could say anything Leo plopped himself down on the lowest step and nodded to himself, seemingly determined. "Okay, I'll try." 

"Try to… explain?" David asked cautiously. He settled down beside Leo on the narrow step. "I thought--I mean, Xavi did tell me some stuff, about bonding. Cruyff and all. And, um. Him and Andres." David refused to blush. It wasn't like he hadn't _known_ about Xavi and Andres, but that was their private business and he didn't particularly want to talk about it. 

"But not about Cesc? Great, he _would_ pick now to start start caring about etiquette," Leo muttered, not quite quietly enough, when David shook his head. David blinked: he'd heard Leo joke with and about Xavi plenty of times, but he'd never been disrespectful before. "Cesc and Geri are my bondmates. Since we were fourteen. It usually doesn't make much of a difference, we were apart so long, but--what?" 

"Are you fucking _collecting_?" David demanded, indignation rising. It was one thing if this was an equal shitshow for both of them, if they were both stumbling around in the dark together. He could handle that. If this was just another Barcelona inside joke, though, something they'd been trained since almost birth to deal with and he was the only one who couldn't--

"Are you--don't you dare get mad at me! This isn't my fault!" Messi said, his voice cracking and louder than David had ever heard him. He was, David abruptly realized, _furious_. He'd never seen Messi get angry before. Pissy or frustrated that things weren't going his way in a match, sure, but never like this, hovering on the knife's edge between rage and hysteria. "I didn't choose this. I didn't _want_ this. Maybe we were stupid and too young but we chose it, they chose me and I chose them because we wanted it and _I didn't want you!_ " 

"Okay," David said after a long, stunned moment of silence. "I'm sorry, Jesus. Nothing personal or whatever." 

"Yeah, well, fine," Messi mumbled. He swiped at his eyes: somehow he was managing to even _cry_ angrily. David was unwillingly impressed. "I'll sic Geri on you, so cut it out. This is bad enough without you being a dick." 

David hesitated, chewing irritably on his lower lip, and finally put an arm around Messi's shoulders. He felt unquantifiably better as soon as they were touching, and Messi stopped sniffling, thank God. It was tremendously annoying as well, of course, but David was willing to overlook that so long as he didn't have to deal with tears or snot belonging to anyone he wasn't related to. "Like I'm scared of that overgrown toddler, anyway," he said. 

"He's a good bondmate," Messi said flatly. "He's always taken really good care of me." David almost brought up the fact that Pique had summarily ditched Messi for a shot at the Premier League, but something told him that it wouldn't go over well. 

"Okay," he said instead. "So. How does this, you know. Work." Messi just looked at him, uncomprehending, and David very quietly hated him a little bit for making him say this aloud. "I mean, do we have to, you know…" He couldn't bring himself to actually spit the words out in the end; he gestured vaguely with his free hand instead. Messi kept staring, and then: 

"What? No! What the--what the _fuck_ did Xavi say to you?" The look of mixed bewilderment and revulsion on Messi's face was probably the most reassuring thing David had seen since before the accident on the training pitch. "No offense," he added hastily. 

"None taken." 

"But why would you even--"

"Andres and Xavi--"

"You're no Andres, Guaje," Leo said. "And I'm definitely not Xavi. Jesus. I mean-- _Jesus_. I'd kill myself first." 

"Okay, maybe _now_ I'm offended--"

"Not _that_ ," he interrupted, impatient. "Xavi's a freak, you know that, right? Not even once in a lifetime, once in--once in forever, okay. Nobody's like him, nobody else hears everyone like him. I can't even imagine what he--maybe he's used to it, maybe it's not that bad, but I couldn't. And Andres--Andres is Andres. I don't know, maybe if you're like that, if you're like that on the pitch and off the pitch and all the time, maybe you do have to, because it's just so much of--I don't know. Or maybe they would have even if they weren't, I don't know. But it doesn't matter. We're not going to be like that." 

"And you're sure?" 

Leo raised an eyebrow, the quiet sense of humor that David had had to learn to interpret that season peeking through. "I've already got a girlfriend, you know." 

"Yeah, and I've already got a wife," David retorted. It was… easier, now that he wasn't angry. It was easier to think about being in this together. "All right, I obviously got some wrong impressions, so why don't you go ahead and explain this from the start and we'll go from there. If you're sure you can handle talking that much," he added. "Maybe take a break and do a section in interpretative dance." 

"Fuck you, it'd serve you right if I did," Leo said easily. He shrugged off David's arm and got to his feet in one smooth movement, and then turned to hold out his hands. "C'mon, I can talk on the way to the dressing room. We're going to get fined if we're any later." 

They fell into step again as soon as they started moving. It was going to take some getting used to, David thought, but it might not be all bad, in the end.


End file.
